Wendy Davis lost on Tuesday. She lost utterly, completely, ignominiously and humiliatingly. She did not even win by comparison to other losers who came before her – in fact, she actively set her cause back several years. It would take a special type of thinking to think that Davis’ public self-immolation constituted any sort of victory – by which I mean, liberal thinking. Behold, here is a column which helpfully explains how liberals define “winning” and therefore why their policies inevitably result in what the rest of the world calls “losing.”

Although Davis rose to fame after her infamous 11-hour filibuster over the anti-choice bill SB5, she didn’t manage to win even the majority of the female vote in Texas. Apparently, the women who showed up at the polls prefer to be governed by a man who is against all forms of abortion, even for victims of rape and incest. 

But despite this disappointing loss, Wendy Davis has profoundly changed politics.

Davis stood up for women’s right to reproductive control unlike anyone else and made this a central plank of her campaign. Although no major news network even bothered to air her filibuster back in 2013, it was her unflinching devotion to the issue that made it a national story that no one could ignore. Davis didn’t just prove that women’s lives are worth caring about, she showed that reproductive justice could no longer be treated as a fringe issue.

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Wendy Davis revolutionized what it means to be a female candidate. She pioneered the art of running as a woman, unapologetically. She wore pink glasses to work, pink running shoes for her filibuster and spoke openly about being a single mother. She never fit the mold, but she never tried either. That’s what made her so threatening to the status quo.

The mind boggles at the cocooned-from-reality worldview that treats results as secondary or even tertiary to how participating in the process causes one to feel. Sure, Wendy Davis turned national exposure and millions of dollars into an embarrassing and historic landslide loss, but the few dozen supporters who were with her to the bitter end had positive feelings about being on the campaign trail. Sure, she lost badly among every imaginable demographic (including women!) but a certain subset of those women can feel empowered about the prospect of wearing pink running shoes to their places of work and have hope that they, too, will find a man they can sucker into paying for several years of postgraduate education before leaving him.

Even the narrative here either ignores or completely glosses over inconvenient facts. Such as the fact that she did not respond to pressure about her abortion convictions with “unflinching devotion” but rather instead with a convenient and transparent flip flop on the very issue she filibustered – a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.  Or for instance the fact that a candidate who lost by over 20 points did not in any meaningful way at all “threaten” the “status quo” – or, for that matter, anything else. Token unfunded sacrifical lamb Democrat candidates fared better in recent elections than Wendy Davis did, in spite of the fact that she spent millions of dollars and had very high name recognition. It’s like the author is not commenting upon the actual race that occurred in Texas, but rather an idealized movie about how the campaign made her feel, which to liberals is a perfectly acceptable way to view the world. I’m reminded of perhaps the only honest passage in Meghan McCain’s error-riddled first book, where she admitted:

I checked dates and facts, and corroborated my accounts with friends and family, but my stories are decidedly impressionistic rather than reportorial.

Naturally, this being a liberal, it is fitting that the specific ideal that merits the sacrifice of factual accuracy is the late-term dismemberment of unborn children.

In the real world, as opposed to the liberal one inhabited by the author of this and similar delusional columns, results count significantly more than the way the effort makes you feel. In fact, results count to the total exclusion of the way the effort makes you feel. Fans of the Oakland Raiders are not inspired by the plucky efforts of people who probably do not belong on a professional football team; rather they wish the team would fire their coach, GM, and owner. Your boss will not care what the struggle to get to work taught you about yourself; he will care that you did not get to work on time.

And by and large, the American people reflect this same expectation in their politics. Sure, we all got a little stupid and for a few minutes there we were more concerned about what how the election of Obama reflected on our journey as a country, but eventually it became considerably more important that workforce participation remains cratered indefinitely, our national security interests are imperiled worldwide, our spending is out of control, and our personal freedoms are being eroded under the heel of a crushing regulatory state. And when those real life concerns start to intrude, they tend to crowd out reflections on the personal empowerment of brightly colored sneakers worn by a complete stranger.

What’s incredible is that after last Tuesday, some liberals still haven’t noticed.